A Time Mistaken for Dawn
by Ryuuza
Summary: [Kyouya x Tamaki] BAND AU. Everyone knows, but sometimes that doesn't solve anything. Haruhi wishes she could help. Kyouya wishes he could just ignore everything.


_Ouran Koko Host Club_, PG, Kyouya/Tamaki, 1770 words  
Band AU. Everyone knows, but sometimes that doesn't solve anything.  
For **thedreamwhisperer** and **suxing**.

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**A Time Mistaken for Dawn**

_The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies._  
-William Faulkner

_The Host Club_'s most successful single was titled "Sunset". The lyrics belied the name, however. Tamaki had written it one stormy afternoon when the pale blue Tokyo skies had darkened with heavy grey clouds and rain. He'd helped in its composition in a dark studio, envisioning emphatic crescendos in the background drums and low-pitched guitars. The lines of the song had very little to do with the sun and more to do with the quiet and the pitch of the falling darkness.

_And when the sun is gone, it's like looking into your eyes / Sunset's passed and now passion and thunder paint you in the sky_

It was an atypical love song: romantic and sweeping with grand comparisons to nature's majesty, as was Tamaki's wont, but with an edge of loneliness that manifested itself in the haunting piano solo played during the bridge.

Mori knew the emotion Tamaki poured into that segment. He sat silently with him in the studio during the late nights of recording. He saw the heart in his fingers, flying over the keys, saw the tears hovering in the corner of his eyes, bright and unfallen. He said nothing because his support was given best in silence. Tamaki smiled gratefully at him aftewards as he set his shoulders, bracing it once again for the weight of the world, and shrugged away his irregular melancholy.

--

Honey was delegated to fill the adorable, baby-faced role of the group, despite or maybe regardless of his impressive proficiency on the keyboards. Much as his innocent smiles and charming adoration for sweets hid the true musician that lurked within, they hid his sharp intuition. It was easy for Honey to pretend oblivion to anything but the cute things...but few realized that that necessitated being quick enough to notice everything before deciding what was cute and worthy of attention.

He knew Tamaki was in love. Everyone knew Tamaki was in love. Tamaki wouldn't be Tamaki if he weren't. His love affair with the world at large was one of his greatest traits as a person, and certainly one of the traits that had earned him such a large and devoted fan base. He swept girls off their feet with chivalry, wooed them with his adoring smiles, and stole their hearts with his unrivalled passion for life. His enthusiasm was legendary.

Honey would have been blind if he hadn't realized Tamaki was in love. What he knew, however, was something harder to see. Tamaki had done his best at concealing everything but his bright, happy exterior--but Honey was more observant than that. Snuggled against Mori in the back seat of the van, he saw Tamaki heave a sigh when no one else was looking. Laughing and spinning with Haruhi in the greenroom behind the stage, he saw Tamaki gaze silently, pensively, into space. Sucking a spoonful of his favourite strawberry cheesecake into his mouth, he saw Tamaki excuse himself from the interview to use the bathroom, his expression pained in the half-second before he turned away. Skipping his hands over the keyboard at rehearsal, he saw Tamaki fumble at his microphone with clumsy, tense fingers, heard his voice break in the middle of "Sunset".

Tamaki was pining, Honey realized, troubled.

--

Honey was not the only one who knew. Hikaru and Kaoru knew, also--they knew whom the song was about. Two pairs of eyes saw more than one, after all, and they hadn't missed the years of friendship turn into something else. Tamaki depended on Kyouya more than anyone else and it was obvious in subtle ways. It was always Kyouya he turned to first after an ebullient declaration for one or another newfound passion, be it their just-finished concert or their upcoming photo shoot. It didn't matter if Kyouya responded with amusement, encouragement, annoyance, or pragmatic refusal: it was only important that Tamaki sought his opinion before that of anyone else.

Every one of _The Host Club_'s members received exuberant texts and phone calls from their leader; every one of them was often subject to Tamaki's mood swings and sulks. Kyouya alone was privy to the moments of weakness and doubt, the sincere anxiety that Tamaki locked away from the public. Hikaru and Kaoru knew what they saw when Tamaki's smile would fade a notch at Kyouya's disapproving frown, or when Tamaki's joy would bound a little higher when he could celebrate a success with Kyouya's too rare laughter--they shared those bonds with each other; they could recognize them in others easily.

They knew whom Tamaki had written the song about. It was obvious to them, and when Kyouya had asked Kaoru one day what he was staring at, Kaoru had said cryptically, "Your eyes are grey."

_And when the sun is gone, it's like looking into your eyes / Rain's falling tonight and you're not here, listening by my side_

--

_The Host Club_ members were close. They were a young band but they had all known each other before their professional debut; years of history would bind them together, even if their care didn't. But they were indeed close, partly out of personal choice and partly out of inevitability. Together, they'd worked towards media recognition; together, they'd sung and played and danced; together, they'd made memories and music that brought them at last close to their second anniversary.

Despite the various bonds each member shared with others, despite all the concern and understanding Tamaki had garnered from his bandmates, only Haruhi knew why Tamaki had written the song. Only she knew why he'd written the lines of his heart into the lines and notes of "Sunset", why he'd done it now, why his effervescent laughter these days hid his mounting fear.

She'd been with him when Kyouya had called from his father's house, trying to explain in clipped tones why he couldn't make the interview. She'd been with him after he and Kyouya had had an argument about time management, and whether or not Kyouya could be an active part of his father's company while remaining committed to _The Host Club_--and whether or not Tamaki had a right to have an opinion. She'd been with Tamaki when they'd recorded the vocals to "Sunset", sweetly melancholy and wishful to mask the edge of desperation.

She'd been there, along with the rest of the band, when Kyouya had been hospitalized three weeks ago for fatigue and an alarmingly high blood pressure. It had been impossible not to notice the way Tamaki had clutched his hands together, white-knuckled, or see the way his shoulders had shook.

Kyouya was fine now after two weeks of rest mandated by their manager, but the worry hadn't faded from Tamaki's face, nor had the tense lines of anxiety eased from his body. Haruhi did her best. "We'll just have to help him," she said practically. "We won't let him do as much. We'll make him take breaks and make sure he eats well and sleeps enough." She patted Tamaki's back as gently as she could and told him, "You shouldn't worry so much. It won't help him."

The despair in his eyes when he turned to look at her shook her to her core.

Suoh Tamaki was never desolate, not truly. He was too immersed in joy, in the inexplicable but unquestioning love of those around him. He had too much to give, too much passion for the world, to be broken.

Haruhi had never thought that one day the passion might end up lashing back, punishing Tamaki for caring too much.

_Where has the sun gone/ Where have you gone?_

Haruhi hated most in the world the feeling of helplessness.

--

Kyouya--mouth set and eyes hard behind his glasses, fighting every day for his right to work, to be interviewed, to play the drums, insisting that he was _fine_--knew nothing.

No, that wasn't right.

Kyouya knew his obligation to his family was warring with his obligation to his bandmates. He knew he would have to make a decision soon, because it had been made painfully clear to him after three days of hospitalization and two weeks of compulsory leave that he could not handle both at once. He knew he was putting off that decision even as he ticked off page-long to-do-lists daily. He knew he was going to have regrets no matter his decision.

Kyouya was very clever. He was a brilliant planner, able to frame Tamaki's grandiose and often ludicrous ideas into manageable and plausible suggestions for their manager. He was a clear thinker: logical, precise, and pragmatic. Few could argue that he was highly intelligent.

But Kyouya was not good with emotions. They weren't logical, or manageable, or rational. They were stumbling blocks in his calculations and he hated that. He had adopted a mind-numbing stubbornness against them in the past, determined to ignore them whatever they wailed or pleaded, because his goal had to be achieved. Since making friends with Tamaki, he had changed to some degree. He learned better to accept his emotions, to work with rather than around them to an extent.

When push came to shove, however, Kyouya retreated to familiar habits. It was easier than losing control as panic crawled up his throat and threatened to choke him. He was no longer a middle school student prone to fits of anger, he told himself. He had grown up. He could handle himself. He would ignore the inconvenient fear preying on his mind, ignore the whispers warning him that he was hurting people he loved, ignore the unsettling feeling that he was reacting blindly...

Kyouya knew many things, but it was easier for him to pretend to know nothing.

He smiled when Tamaki hesitantly played the preliminary melody of "Sunset" for him the first time and read him the lyrics. "I think it'll be a hit," he said. He was right.

--

Tamaki dreamed sometimes of Kyouya. They would be young again, standing on white beaches that seemed to stretch endlessly in both directions. The ocean would stretch in a different infinity directly before them, afire with the red and orange of the setting sun. Kyouya's arms were full of souvenirs from their journey around Japan, his smile wry as he looked at Tamaki. Tamaki would breathe deep and laugh, delighted at their indomitable youth, and he would stretch out his hand toward Kyouya.

Kyouya would free his own hand and clasp it around Tamaki's, the sun bathing his face in a warm, golden glow--and for a moment the grey of his eyes would be light in the sunset.

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Sequel pending. Feedback appreciated! 


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